The Carillon performs its primary function as the official “nice restaurant” of the University of Texas. It’s on the AT&T Center’s ground floor, which makes it convenient for UT staff lunches (only breakfast and dinner are open to the public); at night, it’s an opportunity to wine and dine prospective appointees and donors. For everyone else, it’s the chance to have a nice dinner at a less-expensive chef-driven restaurant.

The menu’s far savvier than that of most hotel restaurants, and the six-course tasting menu is a good deal. The small touches are there, like soft, salted butter and warm bread to start, and homemade truffles for dessert. Quality ingredients are well matched, like short rib croutons with lightly dressed field greens; and seared seasonal fish with dried cherries, cauliflower, and brown-butter yogurt. Sometimes balance is an issue, but a less jarring one if you have several small courses.

Still, it’s hard to get around the dining-hall atmosphere, which you might call “upscale ranch”—tans and browns, leather and wagon-wheeled chandeliers, grand arches lined with the wise words of cowboy-dignitaries. The extensive wine list, too, struggles with that generic hotelishness, marking everything way up and hiding some really good unheard-of producers among the perfunctory big names that vary little from each other, stylistically. But at least they’re in there.